Extended Data Figure 2.

Roles of carbon and nitrogen in biofilm growth oscillations. a, Effect of increasing carbon (glycerol) or nitrogen (glutamate) availability on the oscillations. While increasing glutamate by 5 times of the normal MSgg levels leads to quenching of the oscillation, increasing glycerol by 5 times does not. b, Colony growth of mutant strain with rocG deletion. B. subtilis NCIB 3610 has two glutamate dehydrogenases (GDH), rocG and gudB. While gudB is constitutively expressed, rocG expression is subject to carbon catabolite repression¹⁸. The oscillatory growth of the rocG deletion strain indicates that carbon-source dependent regulation of rocG expression is not required for biofilm oscillations.